The MA degree that led me to the first steps of changing the world to a more accessible space, by Abigail Chapman
- Written byPost-Grad Community
- Published date 26 January 2022
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Abigail Chapman, MA Design for Social Innovation and Sustainable Futures graduate and founder of The Accessibility Project, documents her journey and experiences, to setting up The Accessibility Project: a project advocating for better accessibility for people with disabilities and impairments.
I first started at London College of Communication (LCC) with my Bachelor of Arts in Graphic and Media Design. It was an amazing experience, and slowly, I found my voice. I knew I didn’t want to be a traditional graphic designer. I aspired to change the world; to become an advocate, an activist - and that’s exactly what I started to do. I knew my degree wasn’t enough. I had developed the design skills to communicate, but I didn’t fully have the right tool kit to use design to create change, so I decided to undertake my master’s in Design for Social Innovation and Sustainable Futures - again, at LCC.
How did my master’s impact my work?
I came into my master’s knowing exactly the subject matter I wanted to work with. I knew what I aspired to do; I just didn’t know how. I am disabled. I have severe medical conditions that I was born with. There have been times when they’ve been manageable, and there have been times when we didn’t know if I’d come back out of the hospital. The worst experience with my disability has been the Covid-19 Pandemic. Before the pandemic, I never received or witnessed any discrimination towards the disabled. Why? Because I don’t look disabled. So, unless I told you, you wouldn’t know.
The Covid-19 Pandemic showed that society saw the vulnerable and the disabled as disposable. Those who disagreed with the restrictions, or the vaccine argued that it didn’t affect them, it only affected the vulnerable. I’m vulnerable. Without the vaccine, I wouldn’t survive Covid. I am twenty-six. I am undertaking my master’s, I work, I live, I love, so why is my life disposable?
Through my master’s I worked on subject matter’s related to disability and accessibility. In my units I explored everything from how the pandemic had affected non-covid patient healthcare, the future of ageing, and how to promote a good death. I built the skills and developed the knowledge to talk about sensitive subject matter’s, to research these matters, to undertake anthropological research, to provide solutions through design.
All of this led to my final major project where I developed a social enterprise. The Accessibility Project: a project that advocated for better accessibility for people with disabilities and impairments by working with those in positions of power, and local communities to raise understanding, empathy, and create inclusive, accessible spaces.
The Accessibility Project: A Case Study to enable change.
As part of our FMP, we had to create impact in the real world. It couldn’t be a proposal. I decided that for my case study I would work with LCC. The College, in my opinion, is amazing, but it’s not very accessible. We all know the building holds complex issues, but my focus was on the community.
Through my FMP, I worked with approximately 150 individuals, students and staff, through research surveys, interviews, and workshops. I explored how we can improve accessibility in our community, how we can all become advocates. That accessibility isn’t just about disability. LCC hosts a community full of intersectionality, and this comes with many affordances and disaffordances.
Through workshops, participants and myself, started to explore what accessibility meant to them as an individual, and how that could be applied to the wider community. The feedback and reaction to the project was fantastic. We were collectively starting to make a difference.
What came next for The Accessibility Project?
The Accessibility Project became my future very quickly. I knew it was going to continue after my masters. I knew it had to. I knew I wanted it to. A few months isn’t enough time to truly make impact on such a big subject matter.
I decided that I would collate all my findings and results from the case study at LCC and go to those at the top and pitch the project. I pitched to ask for more time, for support, to work together as an alumni to establish the project. Thankfully I can say that’s exactly what is happening now.
2022 will be the year that I work with LCC to improve our community to become more accessible and inclusive!
What’s next for me?
Since finishing my master’s it’s been chaos. Good chaos, but still chaos. I have written short essays for Dentistry UK, The Mental Health Foundation and The Perspective Project. I am working with the community of Southwark, from grassroots organisations to the public sector and looking at how we can improve accessibility in the local area. I’ve been building an online awareness following and have plans to establish both an accessibility blog and podcast. Finally, from a personal sense, I am developing my own skills to apply for my PhD at medical school in 2023 to explore how we improve the education of medical students.
For somebody who is deemed disposable by society, I think I’ve been doing alright! There is no way I would be where I am if it wasn’t for LCC, my degree, my masters, and the staff that have supported me through all the good, and all of the bad!
Related Links
- The Accessibility Project
- @accessibilityprojectuk
- The Accessibility Project Linktree
- Post-Grad Community
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